Water expert: public health is top drilling issue

By SANDY LONG

UPPER DELAWARE REGION — While acknowledging the environmental and economic impacts of natural gas drilling, Albert Appleton, the designer of the New York City watershed protection program and New York City Commissioner of Environmental Protection from 1990 to 1993, has identified the most pressing drilling issue to be a matter of public health: “Risks to drinking water are not just environmental issues; first and foremost, they are public health issues.”

In his statement to New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) regulators on Marcellus Shale gas drilling, Appleton wrote, “The standard for assessing public health risk is not the environmental standard of balancing environmental risks against economic benefits.”

Commenting on this statement, he added, “We don’t balance public health risk. The standard is no risk.”

Appleton recently testified to the potential harms of natural gas drilling within the city’s Catskill watershed during a public hearing held by NYC councilman James Gennaro and New York City Council’s Environmental Protection Committee on December 12.

As chair of this committee, Gennaro has called for a complete ban on drilling in the watershed that affects the drinking water for nine million New Yorkers and may jeopardize a special permit that allows the city to operate without a water filtration plant. Building one could cost nearly $20 billion dollars, according to Genarro.

A recent series of public scoping sessions conducted by the DEC did not include a hearing in New York City, prompting state officials to call for one, and to request the hiring of an outside consultant to evaluate potential impacts to the city’s watershed.

Earlier this year, Governor Patterson called for a Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement (SGEIS) on drilling. Appleton has questioned the ability for adequate enforcement of the SGEIS, given the DEC’s limited staffing resources and current fiscal crisis. Calling the dimensions of such enforcement “staggering,” Appleton noted, “If just 20 percent of the 12 million acres of the Marcellus Shale was developed at an extremely low density of one well pad every 100 acres—one every 25 acres is common—New York would have to oversee 25,000 well pads.”

Such oversight would require the addition of more permit administrators, field inspectors, emergency responders, groundwater hydrologists, drilling technology experts, public health specialists, testing-lab workers, hearing officers, lawyers, accountants, environmental law enforcement professionals, land use planners and administrative support personnel, according to Appleton.

Speaking from experience, he noted, “When New York City staffed up its Catskill watershed protection program, it hired 400 new staff to do a less complicated task in an area only 10 percent of the size of the Marcellus.”

Appleton described the dangers of moving forward without such measures in place as “regulatory and landscape disaster,” and has called for a new system of annual permit fees, in addition to increased staff, before the EIS is completed and permits are issued.

The locally based group Damascus Citizens for Sustainability (DCS) has retained the international water expert as a consultant, according to DCS representative Pat Carullo. “He is singular in his experience and knowledge about the requirements for the design, development and operation of municipal water systems here and around the world,” said Carullo. “He will be working with us and our national, regional and local partner organizations.”

“In the 21st century, it’s everyone’s responsibility to be green and sustainable,” said Appleton. “But when it comes to drilling, the first standard is, can we do this without imposing a risk on drinking water supply?”

Calling the fracturing fluids used to force gas out of deep deposits a “witch’s brew of water and toxic chemicals,” the water expert advocates for prevention as the only effective strategy for keeping the contaminants out of drinking water supplies in the first place.

Appleton places responsibility on the gas drilling industry for meeting the challenge of cleaning up the “dirty and damaging” process of natural gas extraction and constructively embracing an effective regulatory program to prove that shale drilling presents no risk to drinking water. “The process, from cradle to grave, must be sustainable,” he said. “You don’t solve one problem by creating two more.”